Medicare bill means changes for Central Coast doctors

The U.S. Senate passed a bill Monday overhauling what’s widely viewed as a flawed payment formula for Medicare providers.

President Barack Obama signed the $21 billion bill into law Tuesday afternoon.

The bill will stave off a 24 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements to doctors for a year and extend dozens of other expiring health care provisions, including higher payment rates for rural hospitals. The legislation is paid for by cuts to health care providers, but fully half of the cuts won't kick in for 10 years.

One part of the bill will have significant impact on Medicare providers in California and has been a goal of U.S. Rep. Sam Farr for more than a decade.

It changes the formula by which doctors in Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties are reimbursed by Medicare. Until now, Central Coast counties along with eleven others – including Sacramento and San Diego counties – have been designated as “rural counties’ thus limiting the Medicare reimbursements physicians in those counties receive.

The bill now being signed into law changes the Geographic Practice Index and will boost reimbursements to doctors in rural counties by ten percent or approximately $54 billion.

"Perseverance has paid off. For nearly 15 years, we have been diligently working to fix this problem," Farr told KSBW Tuesday. "Now doctors all over California will be fully reimbursed for seeing Medicare patients. More doctors will want to practice here; expanding access to quality healthcare not just for seniors but for everyone.”